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Emily Lawless
Emily Lawless (17 June 1845 - 19 October 1913) was an Irish poet and novelist. Life Lawless was born at Lyons House below Lyons Hill, Ardclough, co. Kildare. Her grandfather was Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry, a member of the United Irishmen and son of a convert from Catholicism to the Church of Ireland. Her father was Edward Lawless, 3rd Baron Cloncurry (d. 1896), thus giving her the title of "the Honourable". In contrast her brother Edward Lawless was a landowner with strong Unionist opinions, a policy of not employing Roman Catholics in any position in his household, and chairman of the Property Defence Association set up in 1880 to oppose the Land League and "uphold the rights of property against organised combination to defraud". Horace Plunkett was a cousin. She spent part of her childhood with the Kirwans of Castlehackett, County Galway, her mother's family, and drew on West of Ireland themes for many of her works. She occasionally used ‘Edith Lytton’ as pen name. --> It is widely believed that she was a lesbian and that Lady Sarah Spencer, dedicatee of A Garden Diary (1901) was her lover. Writing Lawless wrote 19 books of fiction, biography, history, nature studies and poetry, many of which were widely read at the time. She is most famous today for her Wild Geese poems. ''Hurrish'' Some critics identify a theme of noble landlord and noble peasant in her fourth book, Hurrish, a Land War story set in the Burren Hills of County Clare. The book was read by William Ewart Gladstone and said to have influenced his policy. It deals with the theme of Irish hostility to English law. In the course of the book a landlord is assassinated, and Hurrish's mother Bridget, refuses to identify the murderer, a dull witted brutal neighbour. It described the Burren Hills as "skeletons — rain-worn, time-worn, wind-worn — starvation made visible, and embodied in a landscape." The book was criticised by Irish-Ireland journals for "grossly exaggerated violence", embarrassing dialect, and staid characters. According to The Nation, Lawless "looked down on peasantry from the pinnacle of her three generation nobility." Her reputation was damaged by William Butler Yeats, who accused her in a critique of having "an imperfect sympathy with the Celtic nature" and for adopting "theory invented by political journalists and forensic historians." Despite this Yeats included With Essex in Ireland and Maelcho in his list of the best Irish novels. ''Essex'' and Grania Her historical novel With Essex in Ireland was better received and was ahead of its time in developing the unreliable narrator as a technique. Gladstone mistook it for an authentic Elizabethan document. Her 7th book, Grania, about “a very queer girl leaping and dancing over the rocks of the sea” examined the misogynism of an Aran Island fishing society. "An unflagging unionist, she recognised the rich literary potential in the native tradition and wrote novels with peasant heroes and heroines, Lawless depicted with equal sympathy the Anglo-Irish landholders," Betty Webb Brewer wrote in the Irish American Cultural Institute's journal Éire/Ireland in 1983. ''With the Wild Geese'' Unusually for such a strong Unionist, her Wild Geese poems (1902) became very popular and were widely quoted in nationalist circles, especially the lines: :War-battered dogs are we, :Fighters in every clime; :Fillers of trench and of grave, :Mockers bemocked by time. :War-dogs hungry and grey, :Gnawing a naked bone, :Fighters in every clime :Every cause but our own Critical introduction by Mary Augusta Ward It was as a delightful novelist that Emily Lawless first became known to the world. In the two studies of peasant life in Western Ireland, Hurrish and Grania, she embodied her own close and tender knowledge of the Clare and Galway country—its landscape, its people, its laughter, its tragedies, and all its wild natural life; while in the two historical novels or quasi-novels of Maelcho and With Essex in Ireland, she brought imagination, and a passionate sympathy, to bear on the historical wrongs and miseries of the land she loved. She belonged to one of the Anglo-Irish families, who represent in that tormented country the only fusion so far attained there between the English and Irish tempers. Her grandfather was imprisoned in the Tower in 1798 for complicity with the United Irish conspiracy, but the ex-rebel ended his days as an English peer, the husband of a Scottish wife, and an enlightened landowner in Kildare, devoted to the interests of his tenantry and estates. Down to the last generation the family was Catholic, and kinsmen of Emily Lawless had fought valiantly for Catholic emancipation and hotly opposed the Union. A Lawless — probably of her blood — became a member of the latest Irish Legion fighting for France, on his escape from Ireland after the collapse of the rebellion of ’98. In spite, therefore, of her many English friends and connexions, Emily Lawless was by nature and feeling a patriotic Irishwoman, with a full share of Irish humour and Irish poetry. Her childhood and youth were passed in a free open-air life, now among the woods and fields of Mid Ireland, now by the sea. She became a considerable naturalist, a great reader, and a dreamer whose dreams took shape, at first in her novels, and then in her few poems. If Mr. Yeats’s verse is steeped in the mists and the magic of Ireland, if Moira O’Neill in The Glens of Antrim reflects the Irish simplicity — which is neither sentimental nor insipid, but touched, always, at the heart of it, with irony and pity — Emily Lawless’s best poems strike a sombre and powerful note, stirred in her, it would seem, by the grandeur of the Atlantic coast she knew so well, and by long brooding over the history of Ireland. There is passion in it—passion, one might almost think, of vicarious pain—working in one who felt in herself the blood of both peoples, of the oppressor and the oppressed. The Wild Geese''See Stopford Brooke’s historical Preface to the Poems. was the name given by the romantic and sorrowful imagination of the Irish to those exiled sons of Ireland who, after Limerick and the Boyne, migrated in their thousands over seas, and fought against England in half the armies of the Continent. They avenged Limerick at Fontenoy, and were still — under Napoleon — fighting out the issues of 1689, when the nineteenth century dawned. The cry of Ireland to these cast-out sons of hers is finely given in After Aughrim (the battle fought after the taking of Athlone in 1691); and the yearning of the Irish fugitives for their lost country breathes in the beautiful twin-poems “Before the Battle” and “After the Battle”—the first expressing the hunger of the Irishman for battle, for revenge, and the native land he will never see again; and the second, a vision of the triumphant dead coming home at last to “the stony hills of Clare.” But the noblest poem of them all is the "Dirge of the Munster Forest". The forests of Ireland had sheltered the Irish forces of the Desmonds in the ghastly war of 1581; and in the devastation that followed on their defeat, the forests were not forgotten by the victors. They had given shelter to the rebels, and like them they were ruthlessly slain. The invitation of the Forest to her own funeral feast is vividly and masterly felt. There are some Elizabethan echoes in it, as befits its supposed date. But as a whole, it has the true “inevitable” ring; it could not have been said otherwise; and it ought to keep eternally green the memory of a brave and gifted woman. She died in 1913, after a long and wearing illness, in which, almost to the end, scarcely any of her friends guessed what she had suffered, so high was her Irish courage, and so indomitable her Irish wit and her warm Irish heart.from Mary Augusta Ward, "Critical Introduction: Emily Lawless (1845–1913)," ''The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Mar. 29, 2016. Recognition Two of her poems, "Clare Coast" and "After Aughrim", were included in the Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958).MacDonagh, Donagh & Robinson, Lennox, eds. (1958) The Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press; pp. 100-105. A book of criticism on Lawless – Emily Lawless (1845-1913): Writing the interspace by Heidi Hansson – was published in 2007 by Cork University Press. Publications Poetry *''Atlantic Rhymes & Rhythms''. London: privately published, 1898. *''With The Wild Geese'' (with introduction by Stopford A. Brooke). London: Isbister, 1902. *''The Inalienable Heritage, and other poems. Suffolk, UK: privately published, printed by Richard Clay, 1914. *''The Poems of Emily Lawless. Dublin: Dolmen Press for An Chomhairle Ealaíon, 1965. Novels *''A Chelsea Householder (1882). (3 volumes), London: Sampson. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1882; New York: Holt, 1883. *A Millionaire's Cousin. London: Macmillan, 1885; New York: Holt, 1885. *Hurrish: A study. (2 volumes), Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1886; London & New York: Macmillan, 1887; Belfast: Appletree, 2007. ''Volume I, Volume II *''Major Lawrence FLS (1887). (3 volumes), London: John Murray, 1887; New York: Holt, 1887. ''Volume I, Volume II, Volume III *''With Essex in Ireland: Being extracts from a diary kept in Ireland during the year 1599 by Mr. Henry Harvey, sometime secretary of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex. London: Smith, Elder, 1890; New York: Lovell, 1890; London: Methuen, 1892; New York: Garland, 1979. *Grania: The story of an island. London: Smith, Elder, 1892 **(with introduction by Robert Lee Wolff). New York: Garland, 1979. *''Maelcho: A sixteenth century narrative. London: Smith, Elder, 1894; New York: Appleton, 1894. * A Colonel of the Empire: From the private papers of Mangan O'Driscoll, late of the imperial service of Austria and knight of the military order of the Maria Theresa. New York: Appleton, 1895. *''The Race of Castlebar: Being a narrative addressed by Mr. John Bunbury to his brother, Mr. Theodore Bunbury, attached to his Britannic Majesty's embassy at Florence, October 1798, and now first given to the world'' (with Shan Bullock). London: John Murray, 1913. Short fiction *''Plain Frances Mowbray, and other tales''. London: John Murray, 1889. Non-fiction *''Ireland'' (with Mrs. Arthur Bronson). London: T.F. Unwin, 1885; New York: Putnam, 1887. **also published as The Story of Ireland. London: T.F. Unwin, 1889 **expanded as Ireland: With chapters on the Irish Free State (with additional chapters by Michael MacDonagh). London: T.F. Unwin, 1923. *''Traits and Confidences. London: Methuen, 1898; New York: Garland, 1979. *A Garden Diary: September 1899 - September 1900. London: Methuen, 1901. *Maria Edgeworth. London & New York: Macmillan (English Men of Letters), 1904; New York: Macmillan, 1905. *''The Point of View: Some talks and disputations. Suffolk, UK: privately published, printed by Richard Clay, 1909. Juvenile *''The Book of Gilly: Four months out of a life. London: Smith Elder, 1906. ''Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Emily Lawless, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 29, 2016. See also *List of Irish poets References *Michael O'Flynn, "Troublesome Subjects: History, nature and gender in the Irish writings of Emily Lawless". D.Phil thesis, University of Sussex, 2005, British Library. Fonds Her papers are in Marsh's Library in Dublin. Notes External links ;Poems *"Fontenoy (1745)" in A Book of Women's Verse *Lawless in The English Poets: An anthology: "After Aughrim," "Dirge of the Munster Forest, 1581," "Fontenoy, 1745: I. Before the Battle; night," "Fontenoy, 1745: II. After the Battle; early dawn, Clare coast" *Emily Lawless at PoemHunter (3 poems) *Emily Lawless: Her most famous poems at Ardclough Community Council ;Books * *Emily Lawless at the Online Books Page ;About *Emily Lawless in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica *Emily Lawless at Victorian Secrets *Emily Lawless at Ricorso Category:Irish women poets Category:1845 births Category:1913 deaths Category:Irish novelists Category:Irish poets Category:People from County Kildare Category:Irish women writers Category:Women novelists Category:Women poets